CHAPTER IV
THROUGH FIVE ADMINISTRATIONS
Although Aaron Burr had been acquitted of the charge of treason, the persecution of him still continued. He was practically run out of the country, and when he returned at last in 1812, it was in disguise, under the name of Arnat. Fate soon afterwards dealt him a cruel blow, for in January, 1813, his daughter, Theodosia, the idol of his heart, perished at sea while on a voyage from Charleston to New York.
THEODOSIA BURR:
THE WRECKER'S STORY
[January, 1813]
In revel and carousing
We gave the New Year housing,
With wreckage for our firing,
And rum to heart's desiring,
Antigua and Jamaica,
Flagon and stoup and breaker.
Full cans and a ranting chorus;
Hard hearts for the bout before us—
To brave grim Death's grimaces
On dazed and staring faces.
With dirks and hangers bristling,
We for a gale went whistling,
Tornado or pampero,
To swamp the host of Pharaoh;
To goad the mad Atlantic,
And drive the skippers frantic;
To jar the deep with thunder,
And make the waste a wonder,
And plunge the coasters under,
And pile the banks with plunder.
Then the wild rack came skirling,
Ragged and crazed, and whirling
Sea-stuff and sand in breakers,
Frothing the shelvy acres:
Over the banks high bounding,
Inlet and sound confounding.
Hatteras roared and rumbled,
Currituck heaved and tumbled;
And the sea-gulls screamed like witches,
And sprawled in the briny ditches.
Shelter and rest we flouted,
Jorum and pipe we scouted,
Fiddler and wench we routed.
"Fetch out the nag!" we shouted;
For a craft in the offing struggled.
"Now for a skipper juggled;
Now for a coaster stranded,
And loot in the lockers landed!"
With lantern cheerly rocking
On the nag's head, we went mocking—
Lilting of tipsy blisses,
And Bonnibel's squandered kisses.
Straight for that hell-spark steering,
Drove the doomed craft careering;
Men on her fore-deck huddled,
Sea in her wake all cruddled,
Kitty Hawk sheer before her,
And the breakers booming o'er her.
Till the rocks in their lurking stove her,
And her riven spars went over,
And she lay on her side and shivered,
And groaned to be delivered.
Boats through the black rift storming,
Foes on her quarter swarming;
Dirks in the torchlight flashing,
And the wicked hangers slashing;
Lips that were praying mangled,
Throats that were screaming, strangled;
Souls in the surges tumbling,
Vainly for foothold fumbling;
Horror of staring faces,
Gruesome in Death's grimaces—
And God's wrath overpast us,
With never a bolt to blast us!
By the brunt of our doings daunted,
We crouched where the fore-deck slanted,
Scanning each other's faces,
Graved with that horror's traces.
One, peering aft, wild-staring,
Points through the torches flaring:
"Spook of the storm, or human?
Angel, or wraith, or woman?"
Havoc and wreck surveying,
Imploring not, nor praying,
Nor death nor life refusing;
Stony and still—accusing!
Black as our hearts the creature's
Vesture, her matchless features
White as the dead. Oh! wonder
Of women high heaven under!
So she moved down upon us
(Though Death and the Fiend might shun us),
And we made passage, cowering.
Rigid and mute and towering,
Never a frown she deigned us,
Never with curse arraigned us.
One, trembling, dropped his hanger,
And swooned at the awful clangor;
But she passed on, unharking,
Her steps our doom-strokes marking,
Straight to the plank, and mounted.
"One, two, three, four!" we counted;
Till she paused, o'er the flood suspended,
Poised, her lithe arms extended.—
And the storm stood still and waited
For the stroke of the Lord, belated!
John Williamson Palmer.
Oliver Hazard Perry, the victor of Lake Erie, while in command of a squadron in the West Indies, in the summer of 1819, was attacked by yellow fever, and died after a brief illness. His body was brought to the United States in 1826 and buried at Newport.
ON THE DEATH OF COMMODORE OLIVER H. PERRY
By strangers honor'd, and by strangers mourn'd.
[August 23, 1819]
How sad the note of that funereal drum,
That's muffled by indifference to the dead!
And how reluctantly the echoes come,
On air that sighs not o'er that stranger's bed,
Who sleeps with death alone. O'er his young head
His native breezes never more shall sigh;
On his lone grave the careless step shall tread,
And pestilential vapors soon shall dry
Each shrub that buds around—each flow'r that blushes nigh.
Let Genius, poising on her full-fledg'd wing,
Fill the charm'd air with thy deserved praise!
Of war, and blood, and carnage let her sing,
Of victory and glory!—let her gaze
On the dark smoke that shrouds the cannon's blaze,
On the red foam that crests the bloody billow;
Then mourn the sad close of thy shorten'd days—
Place on thy country's brow the weeping willow,
And plant the laurels thick around thy last cold pillow.
No sparks of Grecian fire to me belong:
Alike uncouth the poet and the lay;
Unskill'd to turn the mighty tide of song,
He floats along the current as he may,
The humble tribute of a tear to pay.
Another hand may choose another theme,
May sing of Nelson's last and brightest day,
Of Wolfe's unequall'd and unrivall'd fame,
The wave of Trafalgar—the fields of Abraham:
But if the wild winds of thy western lake
Might teach a harp that fain would mourn the brave,
And sweep those strings the minstrel may not wake,
Or give an echo from some secret cave
That opens on romantic Erie's wave,
The feeble cord would not be swept in vain;
And though the sound might never reach thy grave,
Yet there are spirits here that to the strain
Would send a still small voice responsive back again.
John G. C. Brainard.
The death of Joseph Rodman Drake, on September 21, 1820, deserves mention here, not so much because of Drake's prominence as a poet as because of the admirable lyric which it called forth—one of the most perfect in American literature.
ON THE DEATH OF JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE
[September 21, 1820]
Green be the turf above thee,
Friend of my better days!
None knew thee but to love thee,
Nor named thee but to praise.
Tears fell, when thou wert dying,
From eyes unused to weep,
And long where thou art lying,
Will tears the cold turf steep.
When hearts, whose truth was proven,
Like thine, are laid in earth,
There should a wreath be woven
To tell the world their worth;
And I, who woke each morrow
To clasp thy hand in mine,
Who shared thy joy and sorrow,
Whose weal and woe were thine:
It should be mine to braid it
Around thy faded brow,
But I've in vain essayed it,
And feel I cannot now.
While memory bids me weep thee,
Nor thoughts nor words are free,
The grief is fixed too deeply
That mourns a man like thee.
Fitz-Greene Halleck.
In 1824, at the invitation of Congress and President Monroe, the Marquis de Lafayette, who had played so important a part in the revolution, visited the United States. He arrived in New York August 15, and for the next fourteen months travelled through the country, visiting every state, and being everywhere received with reverence and affection. On June 17, 1825, he laid the corner-stone of the Bunker Hill Monument.
ON LAYING THE CORNER-STONE OF THE BUNKER HILL MONUMENT
[June 17, 1825]
Oh, is not this a holy spot?
'Tis the high place of Freedom's birth!
God of our fathers! is it not
The holiest spot of all the earth?
Quenched is thy flame on Horeb's side;
The robber roams o'er Sinai now;
And those old men, thy seers, abide
No more on Zion's mournful brow.
But on this hill thou, Lord, hast dwelt,
Since round its head the war-cloud curled,
And wrapped our fathers, where they knelt
In prayer and battle for a world.
Here sleeps their dust: 'tis holy ground:
And we, the children of the brave,
From the four winds are gathering round,
To lay our offering on their grave.
Free as the winds around us blow,
Free as the waves below us spread,
We rear a pile, that long shall throw
Its shadow on their sacred bed.
But on their deeds no shade shall fall,
While o'er their couch thy sun shall flame.
Thine ear was bowed to hear their call,
And thy right hand shall guard their fame.
John Pierpont.
Lafayette's sixty-eighth birthday was celebrated at the White House September 6, 1825, and he sailed next day for France, where he died May 20, 1834. The verses by Dolly Madison which follow were only recently discovered.
LA FAYETTE
Born, nurtured, wedded, prized, within the pale
Of peers and princes, high in camp—at court—
He hears, in joyous youth, a wild report,
Swelling the murmurs of the Western gale,
Of a young people struggling to be free!
Straight quitting all, across the wave he flies,
Aids with his sword, wealth, blood, the high emprize!
And shares the glories of its victory.
Then comes for fifty years a high romance
Of toils, reverses, sufferings, in the cause
Of man and justice, liberty and France,
Crowned, at the last, with hope and wide applause.
Champion of Freedom! Well thy race was run!
All time shall hail thee, Europe's noblest Son!
Dolly Madison.
Washington, April 25, 1848.
John Adams, second President of the United States, died at his home in Braintree, Mass., July 4, 1826. His last words were, "Thomas Jefferson still lives." But by a curious coincidence, Jefferson had died at his home, Monticello, in Albemarle County, Va., a few hours before.
THE DEATH OF JEFFERSON
[July 4, 1826]
I
'Twas midsummer; cooling breezes all the languid forests fanned,
And the angel of the evening drew her curtain o'er the land.
Like an isle rose Monticello through the cooled and rippling trees,
Like an isle in rippling starlight in the silence of the seas.
Ceased the mocking-bird his singing; said the slaves with faltering breath,
"'Tis the Third, and on the morrow Heaven will send the Angel Death."
II
In his room at Monticello, lost in dreams the statesman slept,
Seeing not the still forms round him, seeing not the eyes that wept,
Hearing not the old clock ticking in life's final silence loud,
Knowing not when night came o'er him like the shadow of a cloud.
In the past his soul is living as in fifty years ago,
Hastes again to Philadelphia, hears again the Schuylkill flow—
III
Meets again the elder Adams—knowing not that far away
He is waiting for Death's morrow, on old Massachusetts Bay;
Meets with Hancock, young and courtly, meets with Hopkins, bent and old,
Meets again calm Roger Sherman, fiery Lee, and Carroll bold,
Meets the sturdy form of Franklin, meets the half a hundred men
Who have made themselves immortal,—breathes the ancient morn again.
IV
Once again the Declaration in his nerveless hands he holds,
And before the waiting statesmen its prophetic hope unfolds,—
Reads again the words puissant, "All men are created free,"
Claims again for man his birthright, claims the world's equality;
Hears the coming and the going of an hundred firm-set feet,
Hears the summer breezes blowing 'mid the oak trees cool and sweet.
V
Sees again tall Patrick Henry by the side of Henry Lee,
Hears him cry, "And will ye sign it?—it will make all nations free!
Fear ye not the axe or gibbet; it shall topple every throne.
Sign it for the world's redemption!—all mankind its truth shall own!
Stars may fall, but truth eternal shall not falter, shall not fail.
Sign it, and the Declaration shall the voice of ages hail.
VI
"Sign, and set yon dumb bell ringing, that the people all may know
Man has found emancipation; sign, the Almighty wills it so."
Sees one sign it, then another, till like magic moves the pen,
Till all have signed it, and it lies there, charter of the rights of men.
Hears the small bells, hears the great bell, hanging idly in the sun,
Break the silence, and the people whisper, awe-struck, "It is done."
VII
Then the dream began to vanish—burgesses, the war's red flames,
Charging Tarleton, proud Cornwallis, navies moving on the James,
Years of peace, and years of glory, all began to melt away,
And the statesman woke from slumber in the night, and tranquil lay,
And his lips moved; friends there gathered with love's silken footstep near,
And he whispered, softly whispered in love's low and tender ear,—
VIII
"It is the Fourth?" "No, not yet," they answered, "but 'twill soon be early morn;
We will wake you, if you slumber, when the day begins to dawn."
Then the statesman left the present, lived again amid the past,
Saw, perhaps, the peopled future ope its portals grand and vast,
Till the flashes of the morning lit the far horizon low,
And the sun's rays o'er the forests in the east began to glow.
IX
Rose the sun, and from the woodlands fell the midnight dews like rain,
In magnolias cool and shady sang the mocking-bird again;
And the statesman woke from slumber, saw the risen sun, and heard
Rippling breezes 'mid the oak trees, and the lattice singing bird,
And, his eye serene uplifted, as rejoicing in the sun,
"It is the Fourth?" his only question,—to the world his final one.
X
Silence fell on Monticello—for the last dread hour was near,
And the old clock's measured ticking only broke upon the ear.
All the summer rooms were silent, where the great of earth had trod,
All the summer blooms seemed silent as the messengers of God;
Silent were the hall and chamber where old councils oft had met,
Save the far boom of the cannon that recalled the old day yet.
XI
Silent still is Monticello—he is breathing slowly now,
In the splendors of the noon-tide, with the death-dew on his brow—
Silent save the clock still ticking where his soul had given birth
To the mighty thoughts of freedom, that should free the fettered earth;
Silent save the boom of cannon on the sun-filled wave afar,
Bringing 'mid the peace eternal still the memory of war.
XII
Evening in majestic shadows fell upon the fortress' walls;
Sweetly were the last bells ringing on the James and on the Charles.
'Mid the choruses of freedom two departed victors lay,
One beside the blue Rivanna, one by Massachusetts Bay.
He was gone, and night her sable curtain drew across the sky;
Gone his soul into all nations, gone to live and not to die.
Hezekiah Butterworth.
On September 14, 1830, the Boston Advertiser contained a paragraph asserting that the Secretary of the Navy had recommended to the Board of Navy Commissioners that the old frigate Constitution, popularly known as "Old Ironsides," be disposed of. Two days later appeared the famous poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes, which instantly became a sort of national battle-cry. Instead of being sold, the Constitution was rebuilt.
OLD IRONSIDES
[September 14, 1830]
Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!
Long has it waved on high,
And many an eye has danced to see
That banner in the sky;
Beneath it rung the battle shout,
And burst the cannon's roar;—
The meteor of the ocean air
Shall sweep the clouds no more.
Her deck, once red with heroes' blood,
Where knelt the vanquished foe,
When winds were hurrying o'er the flood,
And waves were white below,
No more shall feel the victor's tread,
Or know the conquered knee;—
The harpies of the shore shall pluck
The eagle of the sea!
Oh better that her shattered hulk
Should sink beneath the wave;
Her thunders shook the mighty deep,
And there should be her grave;
Nail to the mast her holy flag,
Set every threadbare sail,
And give her to the god of storms,
The lightning and the gale!
Oliver Wendell Holmes.
SUNG AT THE COMPLETION OF THE BATTLE MONUMENT, APRIL 19, 1836
By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.
The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.
On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set to-day a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.
Spirit that made those heroes dare
To die, and leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee.
Ralph Waldo Emerson.
On December 17, 1839, Longfellow wrote in his journal: "News of shipwrecks horrible on the coast. Twenty bodies washed ashore near Gloucester, one lashed to a piece of the wreck. There is a reef called Norman's Woe where many of these took place; among others the schooner Hesperus. Also the Sea-Flower on Black Rock. I must write a ballad on this." It was written twelve days later.
THE WRECK OF THE HESPERUS
[December 17, 1839]
It was the schooner Hesperus,
That sailed the wintry sea;
And the skipper had taken his little daughtèr,
To bear him company.
Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax,
Her cheeks like the dawn of day,
And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds
That ope in the month of May.
The skipper he stood beside the helm,
His pipe was in his mouth,
And he watched how the veering flaw did blow
The smoke now West, now South.
Then up and spake an old Sailòr,
Had sailed to the Spanish Main,
"I pray thee, put into yonder port,
For I fear a hurricane.
"Last night, the moon had a golden ring,
And to-night no moon we see!"
The skipper, he blew a whiff from his pipe,
And a scornful laugh laughed he.
Colder and louder blew the wind,
A gale from the Northeast,
The snow fell hissing in the brine,
And the billows frothed like yeast.
Down came the storm, and smote amain
The vessel in its strength;
She shuddered and paused, like a frighted steed,
Then leaped her cable's length.
"Come hither, come hither, my little daughtèr,
And do not tremble so;
For I can weather the roughest gale
That ever wind did blow."
He wrapped her warm in his seaman's coat
Against the stinging blast;
He cut a rope from a broken spar,
And bound her to the mast.
"O father! I hear the church-bells ring,
O say, what may it be?"
"'Tis a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast!"—
And he steered for the open sea.
"O father! I hear the sound of guns,
Oh say, what may it be?"
"Some ship in distress, that cannot live
In such an angry sea!"
"O father! I see a gleaming light,
Oh say, what may it be?"
But the father answered never a word,
A frozen corpse was he.
Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark,
With his face turned to the skies,
The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow
On his fixed and glassy eyes.
Then the maiden clasped her hands and prayed
That savèd she might be;
And she thought of Christ, who stilled the wave,
On the Lake of Galilee.
And fast through the midnight dark and drear,
Through the whistling sleet and snow,
Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept
Tow'rds the reef of Norman's Woe.
And ever the fitful gusts between
A sound came from the land;
It was the sound of the trampling surf
On the rocks and the hard sea-sand.
The breakers were right beneath her bows,
She drifted a dreary wreck,
And a whooping billow swept the crew
Like icicles from her deck.
She struck where the white and fleecy waves
Looked soft as carded wool,
But the cruel rocks, they gored her side
Like the horns of an angry bull.
Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice,
With the masts, went by the board;
Like a vessel of glass, she stove and sank,
Ho! ho! the breakers roared!
At daybreak, on the bleak sea-beach,
A fisherman stood aghast,
To see the form of a maiden fair,
Lashed close to a drifting mast.
The salt sea was frozen on her breast,
The salt tears in her eyes;
And he saw her hair, like the brown sea-weed,
On the billows fall and rise.
Such was the wreck of the Hesperus,
In the midnight and the snow!
Christ save us all from a death like this,
On the reef of Norman's Woe!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
The presidential campaign of 1840 was the most exciting that had ever taken place in the United States. William Henry Harrison was the candidate of the Whigs and Martin Van Buren of the Democrats. Harrison was elected by an overwhelming majority.
[October, November, 1840]
Come, rouse up, ye bold-hearted Whigs of Kentucky,
And show the nation what deeds you can do;
The high-road to victory lies open before ye
While led to the charge by Old Tippecanoe.
When Indians were scalping our friends and our brothers,
To Ohio's frontier he gallantly flew;
And thousands of innocent infants, and mothers,
Were saved by the valor of Tippecanoe.
When savage Tecumseh was rallying his forces,
In innocent blood his hands to imbrue;
Our hero despis'd all his bloody associates,
And won the proud name of Old Tippecanoe.
And when this Tecumseh and his brother Proctor,
To capture Fort Meigs their utmost did do;
Our gallant old hero again play'd the Doctor,
And gave them a dose like at Tippecanoe.
And then on the Thames, on the fifth of October,
Where musket balls whizz'd as they flew;
He blasted their prospects, and rent them asunder,
Just like he had done on the Tippecanoe.
Let Greece praise the deeds of her great Alexander
And Rome boast of Cæsar and Scipio too;
Just like Cincinnatus, that noble commander,
Is our old Hero of Tippecanoe.
For when the foes of his country no longer could harm her,
To the shades of retirement he quickly withdrew;
And now at North Bend see the HONEST OLD FARMER,
Who won the green laurel at Tippecanoe.
And when to the National Council elected,
The good of his country still see him pursue,
And every poor man by him thus protected,
Should ever remember "Old Tippecanoe."
And now from retirement the People doth call him,
Because he is Honest and Qualified too;
And for One Term they soon will install him
As President—"Hero of Tippecanoe."
Let knaves call him "coward," and fools call him "granny"
To answer their purpose—this never will do;
When rallied around him we'll rout little Vanny,
And give him a Thames—or a full Waterloo.
The Republican banner of Freedom is flying,
The Eagle of Liberty soars in your view;
Then rally my hearties—all slanders defying,
And thunder huzza! for "Old Tippecanoe."
Among the supporters of brave General Jackson,
There are many Republicans, honest and true,
To such we say "come out from among them,"
And "go it for" Tyler and "Tippecanoe."
Harrison was inaugurated March 4, 1841. He was at that time sixty-eight years of age, but he took up the work of his office with a vigor almost youthful. On March 27, however, he contracted a chill, pneumonia developed, and he died April 4. The vice-president, John Tyler, at once took the oath of office as president.
THE DEATH OF HARRISON
[April 4, 1841]
What! soar'd the old eagle to die at the sun!
Lies he stiff with spread wings at the goal he had won!
Are there spirits more blest than the "Planet of Even,"
Who mount to their zenith, then melt into Heaven—
No waning of fire, no quenching of ray,
But rising, still rising, when passing away?
Farewell, gallant eagle! thou'rt buried in light!
God-speed into Heaven, lost star of our night!
Death! Death in the White House! Ah, never before,
Trod his skeleton foot on the President's floor!
He is look'd for in hovel, and dreaded in hall—
The king in his closet keeps hatchment and pall—
The youth in his birthplace, the old man at home,
Make clean from the door-stone the path to the tomb;—
But the lord of this mansion was cradled not here—
In a churchyard far-off stands his beckoning bier!
He is here as the wave-crest heaves flashing on high—
As the arrow is stopp'd by its prize in the sky—
The arrow to earth, and the foam to the shore—
Death finds them when swiftness and sparkle are o'er—
But Harrison's death fills the climax of story—
He went with his old stride—from glory to glory!
Lay his sword on his breast! There's no spot on its blade
In whose cankering breath his bright laurels will fade!
'Twas the first to lead on at humanity's call—
It was stay'd with sweet mercy when "glory" was all!
As calm in the council as gallant in war,
He fought for its country and not its "hurrah!"
In the path of the hero with pity he trod—
Let him pass—with his sword—to the presence of God!
What more? Shall we on with his ashes? Yet, stay!
He hath ruled the wide realm of a king in his day!
At his word, like a monarch's, went treasure and land—
The bright gold of thousands has pass'd through his hand.
Is there nothing to show of his glittering hoard?
No jewel to deck the rude hilt of his sword—
No trappings—no horses?—what had he, but now?
On!—on with his ashes!—HE LEFT BUT HIS PLOUGH!
Brave old Cincinnatus! Unwind ye his sheet!
Let him sleep as he lived—with his purse at this feet!
Follow now, as ye list! The first mourner to-day
Is the nation—whose father is taken away!
Wife, children, and neighbor, may moan on his knell—
He was "lover and friend" to his country, as well!
For the stars on our banner, grown suddenly dim,
Let us weep, in our darkness—but weep not for him!
Not for him—who, departing, leaves millions in tears!
Not for him—who has died full of honor and years!
Not for him—who ascended Fame's ladder so high
From the round at the top he has stepp'd to the sky!
Nathaniel Parker Willis.